How to get ROR population up.

[Sulorie]

I am interested in what you did there with wh. If he kills easily now SnB tank in solo. Now I began to understand why very few players play for destruction. Do you plan to increase the blocking for the change of side? The point is, as it stands, it is just a formality. Thank you.

Why you think very few play for destro?

[Gyurza83]

It has been a long time. Based on the size of the population, the summer is not over yet.

[Massn]

For me, the main problem was always the factions balance. Too much depends on who has the most zerg, or who have active guilds. And the periods of total dominance of one faction greatly reduced the desire to play with of opposite faction.

[ChicagoJoe]

I don't think the removal was nessesarry but a significant pop reduction by removing of one single addon would need further explanation.
I think people are picking the easiest argument available.

I guess you are asking how did NB removal result in such big population loss? I can explain what my friends list went through at that time.

One day we logged in and skills not working anymore (everything is constant 3sec GCD), then they ask around wtf is going on and they learn NB is removed from game with a small line notice in patch notes. They ask whether there is something similar that reduces number of keybinds required, and the answer is all other similar addons (even ones with 0 conditionals) stopped working as well. Game suddenly became 30+ button.
At that point some of us had razor nagas that were collecting dust, so we plugged them back and adjusted, some werent so lucky. Some folks had regular mouses (not even side buttons). Most those people were semi casuals who would alt-hop mostly playing on several chars. At that point sequencer was not even in the planning to be made. After quite a long wait first version of sequencer drops and it completely sucks ass. No way of sugar coating it.

This is equivalant of LoL switching to a 20+ button gameplay overnight with no notice and telling people that 'they wanted to do it'.

NB was the 3rd highest downloaded addon in WAR history. Transition out of it was the worst way devs could have done it. Dalen's pet project ranked required blood sacrifice of NB, and he did it in the most arrogant way possible. Oceania timezone is a wasteland now. Dalen probably wanted ranked to be his legacy, but killing off low pop timezones is his real legacy.

He could have blocked NB in ranked only, but no. He had to rub it in. Guess how people react to that, after playing with NB being part of the game since forever.

I had heard NB removal was based primarily on ranked match feedback as well but those developers we played with aren’t really active anymore so I can’t confirm. Pretty sure the main developers restarted the game for scenarios and they are pretty awesome people. I can’t fault them for doing what they want with their labor.

I was never serious enough for ranked but enjoyed hardcore guild city pushes. My guilds are now empty shells and there are a tiny number of city instances. NB wasn’t a difference maker in large scale rvr. Organization and Higher population were. It helped for shifting characters to still be 90% effective as you’d be on your well practiced main. I’d be playing more characters who are currently sidelined.

I’m down to playing once a week now. From 10-12 hours to 1 hour. Please guys just do something. This holiday season is when to re-engage the masses.

[Caduceus]

I think the emphasis as of late has shifted towards highly organized, high skill/high renown rank players, and in that process a lot of players are being left out.

Not only that, but the players who are left out are not taken seriously and in fact often stigmatized by the community as being lazy, unskilled, not deserving of rewards, etc.

This simply pushes people away from the game.

One thing that must be realized is that this approach favoring "the best", will by its very definition cater to a very small group of players that are at the top. And then one must ask themeslves: what keeps the vast majority of players that are NOT at the top interested in the game?

[Xirucio]

How to get RoR population up? Start by following all the RoR Streamers.
Ez.